North-to-South transplants: any differences that you notice? (US)

Do Northerners call nonrelatives by relative titles? I had SO MANY aunts growing up, and a bunch of grannies, none of whom were actually related. They were just the old ladies that my great-grandmother had known for 40 years and who were just like family. So someone new might be Miss So-and-so but the woman that lived on the corner was Auntie Green even though she and my actual Granny didn't get along so super well.

My Northern grandparents also went by different terms -- Mimi and Grandma and Grandpa versus Papa and Grandaddy and a variety of Grannys.

Fruitbat said:

Houses: They are much cheaper. Weep holes in the house foundations. No basements. In the house, the occasional giant roach.

Click to expand...

Those are palmetto bugs! They FLY.

Have lovebugs hit south Florida yet?

Oh! CUBAN COFFEE.

And dead palm fronds everywhere, especially after a storm.

As someone who moved from MI to SC 6 years ago...

The weather is a major difference. Resturaunts too! Sweet tea and talking... Sometimes I'm still not used to it all. D:

Marianne Kirby said:

Do Northerners call nonrelatives by relative titles? I had SO MANY aunts growing up, and a bunch of grannies, none of whom were actually related. They were just the old ladies that my great-grandmother had known for 40 years and who were just like family. So someone new might be Miss So-and-so but the woman that lived on the corner was Auntie Green even though she and my actual Granny didn't get along so super well.

My Northern grandparents also went by different terms -- Mimi and Grandma and Grandpa versus Papa and Grandaddy and a variety of Grannys.

Click to expand...

I know someone who has an aunt-not-an-aunt, I think that's fairly common among some people. Like, my family didn't do that sort of thing, but I've run into a few with a random, unrelated aunt or uncle who is a very close friend of the family, but not lots of neighbours called that, just a close friend.

The grandparent names I think isn't regional, just family-specific.

Flip flops. Flip flops everywhere! *Formal* flip flops.

Ordering iced tea in the north gets you unsweetened iced tea. In FL, it's automatically sweet. The sweet tea line used to be around the Mason-Dixon line but it's been creeping north in the last 15 years.

Salt. I noticed when we took my MIL out to dinner at nationwide chains (such as Olive Garden) that the food was FAR less salty in FL than up here.

The grass on lawns is very different than the stuff grown up here.

Smoking. I don't think it's as bad as when I first moved to Virginia, but when I did, EVERYONE smoked EVERYWHERE. Big, painful shock. It got better even before I moved from Virginia, but wow.

Directions. "Drive about a mile down that road and turn left where the Sears used to be 15 years ago, then go past where the restaurant burned down five years ago and it's on the corner where that old tree used to be."

Cool wildlife in your yard, like those big birds. Also alligators, not so cool.

Mark Moore said:

OMG, totally. I live down here, and I'm still surprised at the crap that people try to pull on the roads - like crossing the street from the median to the gas station right in freakin' front of me, and I have to hit the brakes. Or dudebro in his big-ass pick-up truck thinking it's perfectly okay to start backing out of his parking space right as I'm about to pass by it.

Click to expand...

Forget about trying to cross the street. Up here, unless you're in Boston, it's okay to step out into traffic as long as you're in a cross walk. Down there, you take your life in your hands as a pedestrian. Literally. My daughter is doing an internship at Disney, and she said just before she got there one of the college kids was hit by a car.

ULTRAGOTHA said:

Cool wildlife in your yard, like those big birds. Also alligators, not so cool.

Click to expand...

In our five days camping at Disney, we saw a multitude of things, like birds and squirrels, but also geckos and an armadillo. I can't be positive they weren't all animatronic, it being Disney, but I'm pretty sure they were all real. No alligators at Disney though. Our ferry boat driver said they would rather hang out where there is less activity. On the other hand, my daughter, who is a cast member on an internship, said they told them in training that any body of water could have alligators in it.

Very different from up here, where we have wild turkeys and the usual squirrels and chipmunks, but nothing really exotic.

Marianne Kirby said:

Do Northerners call nonrelatives by relative titles? I had SO MANY aunts growing up, and a bunch of grannies, none of whom were actually related. They were just the old ladies that my great-grandmother had known for 40 years and who were just like family. So someone new might be Miss So-and-so but the woman that lived on the corner was Auntie Green even though she and my actual Granny didn't get along so super well.

Click to expand...

That is common in the North. The degree to which non-kin are called "auntie" or something varies widely from family to family and by area to some degree.

My Northern grandparents also went by different terms -- Mimi and Grandma and Grandpa versus Papa and Grandaddy and a variety of Grannys.

Click to expand...

There are many terms for grandparents.

cornflake said:

I know someone who has an aunt-not-an-aunt, I think that's fairly common among some people. Like, my family didn't do that sort of thing, but I've run into a few with a random, unrelated aunt or uncle who is a very close friend of the family, but not lots of neighbours called that, just a close friend.

Click to expand...

I know in my (non-southern) family, we'd often use "Aunt," "Uncle," etc. for the sake of simplicity. i.e. I grew up calling both my mother's cousin and all of my great-aunts "Aunt So-and-so." It was just easier that way.